Copyright and Fair Use

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A healthy copyright system must balance the need to provide strong economic incentives through exclusive rights with the need to protect important public interests like free speech and expression. Fair use is foundational to that balance. It's role is to prevent copyright from stifling the creativity it is supposed to foster, and from imposing other burdens that would inhibit rather than promote the creation and spread of knowledge and learning.

The Fair Use Project (FUP) was founded in 2006 to provide legal support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of fair use in order to enhance creative freedom and protect important public rights. It is the only organization in the country dedicated specifically to providing free and comprehensive legal representation to authors, filmmakers, artists, musicians and other content creators who face unmerited copyright claims, or other improper restrictions on their expressive interests. The FUP has litigated important cases across the country, and in the Supreme Court of the United States, and worked with scores of filmmakers and other content creators to secure the unimpeded release of their work.

Julie is a Non-Residential fellow with Stanford CIS. She represents writers, filmmakers, musicians, and others who rely on fair use in creating their works. Julie has represented visual artist Shepard Fairey in copyright litigation against The Associated Press over Fairey’s “Obama Hope” posters, RDR Books in its copyright and Lanham Act dispute with J.K. Read more » about Julie Ahrens

Tim is a Fellow at the Center for Internet & Society. He splits his time between representing authors, filmmakers, musicians, and others who rely on copyright fair use in creating their works, and pursuing a scholarly research agenda. Tim’s research interests include trademark theory, copyright and trademark fair use, and various doctrinal areas governed by the First Amendment, including commercial speech and campaign finance regulation. Read more » about Tim Greene

Annemarie Bridy is a Professor of Law at the University of Idaho College of Law, where she teaches intellectual property and technology law. Her research focuses on the impact of disruptive technologies on legal frameworks for the protection of intellectual property and the enforcement of intellectual property rights. An active scholar, Professor Bridy has published numerous law review articles and book chapters, many of them on the evolving role of online intermediaries in digital anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting operations. Read more » about Annemarie Bridy

Ben Depoorter is a Professor of Law and Roger Traynor Research Chair at the University of California, Hastings. He is a graduate of Yale Law School (L.L.M., J.S.D.) and also holds a J.D. (1999) and PhD (2003) from Ghent University and a Master's degree from the University of Hamburg (2001). He completed his studies at Yale Law School (2003) on a full scholarship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF). As an Oscar Cox Fellow at Yale, Depoorter conducted research as a John M. Olin Fellow in Law, Economics, and Public Policy. He was a Santander Research Fellow at U.C. Read more » about Ben Depoorter

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If you work in technology, the big bad wolf can be your best friend. Read below to find out why.

A few days ago, the U.S. Supreme court denied Google's appeal from a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit which found that source code -- written instructions that run computer software -- can be protected by copyright law. In so doing, the nation's highest court left in tact a ruling by the Federal Circuit which found Google could have infringed the copyright to Oracle's software programming platform. Read more » about The big bad wolf to the . . . rescue?

"Am I a crook?" A design client recently asked me this question about one its designs, and whether is was legally inspired by or stolen from other works. Of course, Jonathan Adler may consider my client a crook when it uses an edited, transformed, and artistically styled sample of his pillow design to create a custom-made wallpaper design for sale to the public. But would he be right? These days, it is getting harder to tell, but there are still guidelines that can help you navigate the sometimes murky waters separating inspiration from infringement. Read more » about Is your design inspired or stolen?

The bright lines of the real property based view of copyright are being blurred by technology. In 1991, Mr. Biz Markee was found liable for infringing Mr. Gilbert O'Sullivan's copyright in his song, Alone Again (Naturally), when Mr. Markee used an unauthorized sample in his rap song entitled Alone Again. Had Mr. Markee used Mr. O'Sullivan's song in a mash up, the result may have been different. Read more » about An Axl Rose sample used in a mash up doesn't smell as sweet.

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Amicus brief filed in the Second Circuit on behalf of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts urging the appeals court to reverse a district court decision that ignored established fair use principles that many artists rely upon in creating their work. Read more » about Cariou v. Prince - Amicus Brief

The Supreme Court certified two questions in Golan v. Holder: (1) Does section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”) violate the Progress Clause of the Constitution? (2) Does the URAA violate the First Amendment? This Essay argues that section 514 violates the Progress Clause’s requirement that copyright laws “promote the Progress of Science.” This is because the statute bequeaths copyright status without in return achieving any net increase in the creation or dissemination of creative works. Read more » about A Legitimate Interest in Promoting the Progress of Science: Constitutional Constraints on Copyright Laws

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Sarah Morris is a well-known multimedia artist and filmmaker. In 2007, she debuted her "Origami" series, 24 paintings in which she reworked, redesigned, and reshaped origami crease patterns on canvas. Several origami artists sued Morris for copyright infringement, arguing Morris had unduly appropriated their allegedly copyrightable origami crease patterns in developing the "Origami" series. The Fair Use Project teamed up with attorneys Bob Clarida and Donn Zaretsky to defend Morris. We briefed the fair use issues on summary judgment. Read more » about Lang v. Morris

Meltwater News ("Meltwater") is a search engine and research tool that allows users to search for and obtain information about news items that have been made publicly available on the Internet. Read more » about Associated Press v. Meltwater

We filed an amicus brief in the Second Circuit on behalf of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts urging the appeals court to reverse a district court decision that ignored established fair use principles that many artists rely upon in creating their work. Read more » about Cariou v. Prince

The FUP filed this suit on behalf of a University of Denver conductor and others, challenging Congress’s restoration of copyright to works that had entered the public domain. Read more » about Golan v. Holder

"“While yoga certainly originated in India,” says Sonia Katyal, a law professor at Fordham University who specializes in intellectual property, “its widespread adoption in the West—including the hundreds of types of yogas created by enterprising westerners like mommy-and-me yoga, nude yoga, dog yoga—makes it a little harder to explain how its Indian origins are always essential the practice or characteristics of yoga today.”"Read more » about Who Owns Yoga?

"Were Follett to take legal action, it would have a high bar to clear says Andrew Bridges, a partner at Fenwick and West who specializes in copyright law. “The object of intellectual property rights is emphatically not to restrict competition,” he says.

"The Supreme Court sides with the big television networks and rules that Barry Diller's start-up Aereo violates existing copyright law. Christopher Sprigman, a professor at New York University School of Law, joins Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero to discuss."